ANS1: Visit spywareinfo.com forums. Better info there... get cwshredder.zip and hijackthis.zip then, to be nice:
The following assumes you are working on an XP machine and behind a hardware firewall or have a software firewall installed, if not, go into properties for network neighborhood, properties for local area connection, and advanced and enable the XP Firewall.
After running Spybot and Adaware w/ latest reference updates, then run cwshredder (available at spywareinfo). Before rebooting the last time, run msconfig and check the run items and uncheck any that are odd (you can't recognize what they do). Then reboot and run the spyware progs all again. Repeat until system is clean. Do not start a browser session during this time.
When clean, run hijack this (also available at spywareinfo.com) and see if there are any odd Browser helper objects (BHO's) still installed.
That should do it. Spybot and AdAware miss some startup tasks that may reinstall the spyware stuff, so I found I had to find them and do that manually. Since they all have weird names you need to uncheck anything that might be bad. If you disable a sound driver or something you can run msconfig again and enable it afterwards.
Lastly go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com and apply latest patches.
ANS2: MSCONFIG lets you edit startup task items.
ANS3: Tell your parents to stop clicking OK and YES willy nilly. Better yet stop surfing the web. 🙂
